


What They See Is Only Us

by Gefionne



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Physical beatings but nothing more than a few hard punches, incarceration, light voyeurism (not sexual on the voyeur's side), soft and very tender lovemaking, the First Order lost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 14:20:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16955619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gefionne/pseuds/Gefionne
Summary: After their capture by the Resistance, Kylo and Hux are kept in a monitored cell and made to watch each other be harshly interrogated daily. But nothing breaks their resolve, and when they return to their cell, they drop their icy façades and tend each other’s wounds with gentle touches and lovemaking. What the Resistance sees is them as they truly are together.Based onthis kyluxhardkinks prompt.





	What They See Is Only Us

**Author's Note:**

> This prompt is from September of 2017. I fell in love with it that day it came across my dash, but I finally just had the time to sit down and write it. A lot of feelings went into it, so I hope it gives you some, too.
> 
>  **The original prompt:** Kylo and Hux are captured by the resistance and kept together in one (very clearly monitored) cell. They're interrogated daily. Nothing breaks their resolve, not even watching the other being questioned/tortured. When returned to their cells, however, they drop their icy facades, tend to each others' wounds, and have gentle, possessive sex. Bonus points if people who knew Ben Solo are watching.

_My voice is just a whisper,  
_ _Louder than the screams you hear._

“Start of Time,” Gabrielle Aplin _  
_

 

The tranquilizers had worn off slowly, leaving Kylo groggy and unfocused, and he had woken to a sterile cell he didn’t recognize–alone. His last memories were of the Resistance boarding party on the bridge of the _Finalizer_ , where he and Hux had been standing side-by-side waiting for the inevitable. They had lost, their star destroyer the last bastion of the First Order. Hux had cleared the evacuation of all personnel himself, allowing them to escape the clutches of the Resistance and make whatever lives they could for themselves after the Order’s fall. But a commander went down with his ship—so Kylo and Hux had remained aboard to surrender.

The boarding party had been prepared for Kylo’s abilities—though he hadn’t intended on using them—and shot him with needle-tipped vials of Force-suppressant drugs. He had collapsed to the floor at Hux’s feet, feeling his cool hands on his brow just before he lost consciousness. What happened after that, he didn’t know, but he was a Resistance prisoner now, and his use of the Force was still dampened.

He didn’t care about that. He wanted to know where Hux was.

Fisting his hands at his sides, he paced the length of the little cell. If Hux had surrendered, as they had agreed, the Resistance would have taken him prisoner. They fought the wars and took the lives they had to, but when the battles were over, they didn’t put enemy combatants to death. That was a policy from the New Republic, where the most severe sentence for anyone was a life spent in a backwater prison, not execution.

Hux was alive; he had to be.

Kylo couldn’t sit, couldn’t be still when he was away from him—at least not since they had formed their life bond three years ago, after two at odds with each other. Kylo still left the _Finalizer_ to do the Order’s business, but he was unsettled when Hux wasn’t by. Aboard their ship, they had shared quarters: an office, a ‘fresher, a bed. They knew each other’s bodies and minds intimately after so long, and had made a very public pledge to remain together until their lives were spent.

Kylo craved him, needed and ached for him. They were one, and Kylo wouldn’t suffer being separated; he’d die first.

He paced further, footfalls heavy on the durasteel floor. There were two cots on each side of the cell, with an unconcealed toilet and shallow sink between. Going to the sink, Kylo splashed frigid water over his face, wetting the ends of his hair. It was tangled and wild, which Hux had put a stop to as soon as he could take a brush to it. Kylo had expected him to want to cut it, but he hadn’t; he liked it long and made sure to spend time finger-combing it as they lay together in their bed at night. Kylo had never slept as well as he did when Hux was curled around him, their combined heat almost too much.

At first, their desire had been unquenchable, and they had skipped meetings and stayed up late into the cycle to fuck, even going so far as to lock conference room doors after meetings for Kylo to get on his knees and suck Hux’s cock, or for them to rut against each other fully clothed. They spent the rest of the day in wet, soiled underwear.

They hadn’t been able to get enough in the initial two years or so, but in time their need had cooled some. It became more of lovemaking than desperate fucking, and Kylo grew to know that Hux sought praise and gentle hands when Kylo was inside him. When they turned about, Hux lavished Kylo with the attention he yearned for and had never gotten as an untouched Jedi boy.

They still had their days, though—often when Kylo had been away, or after one of their still-common disagreements—when they bit and savaged one another, leaving marks that their clothes fortunately hid. Kylo liked, sometimes, if Hux slapped him across the cheek and then kissed the abused skin. Hux wanted to be thrown down on his belly and fucked into the mattress, making the most obscene, unfettered noises of want. Between them, it was never boring, even if they went long stretches without sex, instead just sleeping in each other’s arms after long, taxing cycles.

 _Where was he?_ Kylo’s flesh was clammy with fear and his fingers felt numb. He couldn’t stand this much longer.

He went to the door of the cell and pounded on it, an attempt to summon someone. It brought nothing, but he tried again and again until his hand hurt and his stomach was twisted in knots. Helpless and hating that feeling, Kylo rested his forehead against the cold door as he struggled to breathe. He jumped as he heard a mechanical whirring and the slide of a heavy lock. Stepping back, he watched the door open to reveal three people standing on the other side.

Two were in Resistance uniform and Kylo had no recollection of their faces, but Hux was slung between them, barely able to keep himself upright. His uniform jacket was torn at the right shoulder and he had a black eye. A trickle of blood had dried under his nose.

Kylo’s rage nearly blinded him, but he charged forward to take Hux by the waist and draw him against his chest. Hux all but collapsed into him, arms coming feebly around his shoulders. Kylo snarled at the Resistance guards and they backed away, shutting the door and locking it again without a word of explanation.

Kylo hauled Hux to one of the cots and laid him down on it, sitting by his side and cradling his beaten face between his hands. “What did they do to you?” he asked quietly.

Hux’s black eye was swollen shut, but he cracked the other open and looked up at Kylo. “Interrogation,” he said, voice weak and broken.

The fury continued to roil in Kylo’s tight stomach, but he handled Hux carefully. “Let me clean you up,” he said. There were no towels, but Kylo tore a strip away from the sheet on the other cot and wet it. Dabbing the blood away from Hux’s nose, he heard Hux sigh. He put a hand on Kylo’s thigh and squeezed lightly.

“Was she there?” Kylo said. Hux knew who he meant: his mother, Leia Organa, leader of the Resistance.

“No,” Hux replied. “Not her ship.”

Kylo wasn’t surprised; he didn’t expect her to allow an interrogation so brutal that Hux would come out bloody. But Kylo had changed a great deal since he had last seen her, and it wasn’t impossible that her fight hadn’t made her more callous, too. That was too generous a word for him, Kylo knew. He was ruthless and had been since he had slaughtered Luke Skywalker’s students and gone to Snoke, who had only cultivated his anger and hatred. He was allowed to let his emotions in instead of tamping them down, and it made him exponentially more powerful. And it had brought him to Hux.

Hux was perhaps even more monstrous than Kylo was, having killed billions without blinking. Ben Solo would have found him horrifying, but he fascinated Kylo Ren. He was relentlessly driven and so unfailingly loyal to the Order’s cause. He had doubted Kylo’s own commitment—as had Kylo in the beginning—until they had stopped to really see each other, and in that came to recognize a shared and potent ambition. That desire for power and control transformed into physical want, and from there only deepened to understanding of a shared savagery. No two men were better suited for each other than they were in their viciousness.

“Come drink some water,” Kylo said, putting a hand behind Hux’s head and urging him to sit up. Hux winced as he did, a hand at his ribs. Kylo asked, “Did they break anything?”

“Only a bruise,” said Hux. “Forgive my weakness. It’s been years since I took a beating.”

Kylo scowled, casting a hateful glance at the door, as if it was at those who had handled Hux roughly. “Drink, and then let me see it.”

Hux, standing unsteadily by the sink, cupped his hand to catch the water and bring it to his lips. Kylo helped him back to the cot, where he began unfastening the closures of Hux’s uniform jacket. Beneath, he wore only a black undershirt and would be cold in the cell, but Kylo needed to know that he wasn’t seriously hurt. For all their lack of mercy for their enemies, they couldn’t watch each other suffer.

Hux’s right side was dark with bruising, but as Kylo prodded at the ribs, he didn’t hiss in pain. Ducking his head, Kylo kissed over the fist-shaped marks, tasting Hux’s familiar musky skin. Hux stroked the back of Kylo’s head, fingers catching in the knots in his hair.

“What do they want to know?” Kylo said as he sat back up and met Hux’s gaze.

“Where the remaining bases are,” said Hux. “They want to take prisoners and destroy the bases.”

Kylo tensed. He knew the locations, too, but wouldn’t divulge them. They were the last stores of information and resources, which the personnel would get rid of before the New Republic could get their hands on them. They just need the time to do it.

“I didn’t tell them anything,” Hux said, with a crooked smile. “They can do this for days. They’ll get nothing from me.”

“I know,” Kylo said. “Not from me, either. But…” He pressed his lips to Hux’s damp brow. “They’ll hurt you again.”

Hux raised his hands and guided Kylo back until he could see him. “We promised we would endure if this happened. We were prepared.”

Kylo sighed deeply. “It doesn’t make it easy. I want to kill anyone who touched you. Slowly. Flay their minds.”

“Mm,” Hux hummed softly. “I would gladly watch you do it.”

There was no one else in the galaxy who embraced what Kylo could do in the way Hux did; he appreciated and admired it. Kylo had always been an outsider as a boy—stronger than the other students and more sulky for it. Even when he came to the First Order, he had stood out and been feared. But Hux had never been afraid of him, and he had given Kylo the home and belonging he had always lacked. They were meant to be together, and nothing would put them asunder.

“I wanted to destroy every single one of them when they attacked you earlier,” Hux continued. “Those awful little vials of poison. I pulled them from your neck myself.” He brushed his fingertips over a sore spot Kylo had barely noticed before. “They had to drag me from you.” Kylo drew him into his arms again, kissing his bony bare shoulder, while Hux said, “You’re mine.”

“Always,” Kylo said.

Hux stroked his back, just breathing as they embraced. After a moment, he said, “They’re watching us. All these cells are monitored. I could see you while they had me. You were unconscious, but when you woke, you were so disturbed. It was like I could feel your anxiety through the holo feed.”

“I needed you,” said Kylo. “You know I don’t...do well on my own, anymore.”

“I do know,” Hux said, nuzzling the join of Kylo’s neck and shoulder, where the collar of his robes lay. “Are you better now?”

Kylo hugged him close, sliding one hand up under his shirt to feel the soft skin of his back. “Yes.”

There was a button at the back of Kylo’s high collar, which Hux flicked open. “Lie with me,” he said.

Kylo moved reluctantly away, if only to remove his belt and surcoat. His long-sleeved tunic and boots followed, leaving him bare-chested and in his socks and trousers. He moved to lie down on the cot with Hux, but Hux stopped him with a hand on his pectoral.

“The rest of it, too,” Hux said lowly.

Questioning, Kylo said, “They’re watching.”

Hux nodded. “ _Because_ they’re watching.”

Kylo shivered but complied, stripping down to nothing while Hux undressed, too. They left their clothing in a pile on the floor and tucked themselves onto the cot, face-to-face even in the scant room they could find.

Hux began to kiss him slowly, the tip of his tongue just touching Kylo’s lips until he brought his own up to meet it. There was no urgency to it, especially since Kylo was afraid of holding Hux too hard and hurting him. They touched each other with steady hands, Kylo’s callused and scarred ones moving over Hux’s hip to his buttock, into which Kylo dug his fingers. Hux gave a velvety little moan, pushing his hips closer to Kylo’s and bringing a leg between both of his. Kylo could feel his cock hardening against his thigh and reached down to wrap his fingers around it.

The first time they had been together, it had been violent and angry, Kylo slamming Hux back against a bulkhead and shoving his tongue into his mouth while he fumbled with Hux’s fly. Hux had bitten him for it, filling both of their mouths with the copper taste of blood, but it hadn’t stopped Kylo from pulling his cock free of his regulation trousers and stroking him demandingly.

“Get yourself out,” Hux had spat. “We do this together or not at all.”

Kylo’s hand had fit around both of them as he stroked them to completion that time. Hux had come first, leaving Kylo to use his warm spend to ease the last strokes of his own cock before he came, too. He had wiped his hand on his cowl, which Hux had admonished him for, though neither of them really cared.

Now, Kylo took them both in hand again, but began almost carefully—reverently —pressing their cocks together as they wound their bodies around one another. Hux kissed him harder as Kylo worked, tugging at his hair and wrapping his chilly foot around Kylo’s calf.

“Mine,” Hux murmured. “You are _mine_.”

Kylo grew more desperate with the words, his climax building as he sped his strokes. When Hux grunted and spilled himself over Kylo’s fist, Kylo bit down on his neck, sucking a mark there. It was a bruise given in love, which the Resistance would see didn’t match the ones they had given him. They would see this, too, and Kylo was anything but shy about it.

“ _Hux_ ,” he groaned as he tipped over the edge and into bliss. He could hear Hux repeating his name and petting him as he came down. There was nothing—no one—that had ever meant this much to Kylo. They were inextricably bound, and would be until Kylo breathed his last.

Kylo went to get another bit of sheet to clean them up before he gathered Hux against him, this time with his back to his chest, and said, “Rest. I’ll guard us.”

Hux held the arm that Kylo had wrapped around his chest. “Whatever comes.”

“Whatever comes,” Kylo repeated, but Hux had already fallen asleep.

 

* * *

 

Poe Dameron had come aboard the _Allegiant_ after Kylo Ren and General Hux had been brought as prisoners from their star destroyer. Kylo— _Ben_ —had been heavily sedated and locked up in a cell, but Hux had been taken immediately to interrogation. Captain Andrus had ordered his staff to get the locations of the last remaining First Order strongholds from him, using violence if necessary. Leia wouldn’t have condoned it, of that Poe was sure, but Andrus was in charge right now and he could do what he wanted.

Poe had watched the holo footage of the session—seen a large interrogator strike Hux across the face and pummel his sides with unforgiving blows. But Hux didn’t break. Poe wasn’t surprised; despite his unimposing physicality, Hux was tough as nails, and it showed. What caught him completely off guard, was how he was treated when he got back to his cell.

Ben, still dressed in those ragged black robes he had taken to wearing, caught Hux in his arms and handled him like he was precious. He washed his face and slowly divested him of his jacket until he could lift Hux’s undershirt to see his bruises. And then he had _kissed_ the abused flesh. His dark head had been bent to that mass murderer’s side to trail his lips there while Hux stroked his head.

Poe’s stomach had dropped out in shock and revulsion. He had grown up beside Ben Solo and seen him fumble his way through first crushes, as all teenagers did. He had offered Ben his best advice and seen him with his first, short-lived relationships. Ben had been drawn to good, honest people in those days, but now he was holding General Hux in his arms and gently kissing his battered face.

There was no audio feed from the cell, but Poe could see their mouths moving as they spoke to each other, never letting go of one another after they had first come in contact. Poe couldn’t imagine what they were talking about, but he couldn’t have imagined Ben like this, either: so tenderly cupping Hux’s face and running his big hands along his exposed skin. And Hux, too, was caught up in it. He was a true monster, but he looked so fragile and cared for under Ben’s attention.

Poe should have shut down the feed as soon as Ben began to undress, and yet he stayed stuck to the spot, watching as Hux, too, removed his clothes. Hux did look abused, and Ben was careful not to harm him further as he guided him down onto one of the cots and they curled up together. The kisses were deep and passionate; there was no mistaking that for anything other than true affection and, Poe was quickly realizing, lust.

“Oh, Ben,” he whispered as they made love. “How could you?”

Finally unable to see any more, Poe powered the console down and gave them their privacy. Ben Solo was really lost, then. He had fallen completely to the First Order, and to General Hux. They loved each other; it was plain as day. Poe had hoped that the young man he knew would return to the fold after Luke and Rey rehabilitated him, but he was convinced now that that wouldn’t happen. When you gave yourself to someone like that, there was no coming back.

 

* * *

 

There was no way to measure the minutes or hours in the cell, but Hux slept for a long while as Kylo held him, brushing a hand over his brow when he murmured dreamily. He woke only when the door opened and four guards entered their space. Kylo was on his feet in an instant, uncaring about his nakedness. He went to summon the Force, but remembered he couldn’t, and from the syringe one of the guards was carrying, he was about to be drugged again.

“Don’t touch him,” Kylo said to the guards, standing like a sentinel by the cot, where Hux had just woken and was blinking himself into awareness.

“We’re not here for him,” said a young woman with a puff of black hair at the top of her head.

Kylo took a step toward them and, to his amusement, two of them stepped back. The woman, though, held her ground. Kylo offered her his right arm and the the veins at the inside of his elbow.

“Put some pants on, at least,” she said, refusing to look down at the exposed lower half of his body.

Taking his trousers from the floor, Kylo stepped into them and fasted the fly. He didn’t bother with a shirt or shoes; he wouldn’t need them where he was going.

Hux caught his hand before he gave himself over to the guards, bringing the back of it to his dry lips and kissing it. “I’ll be waiting,” he said, a parting promise.

The shot of chemicals—whatever they were—stung as the liquid was pushed into Kylo’s vein. It took mere seconds for him to feel the weakening effects of it, though he wasn’t rendered unconscious this time. Instead, binders were fitted over his wrists and he was guided out of the cell and down a narrow passageway.

Similar cell doors lined the bulkheads, but Kylo heard no voices from within and his connection with the Force was so heavily suppressed by the drugs that he could sense nothing living. It was uncomfortable to be cut off from the ever-living energy that flowed through everything in the galaxy, and Kylo felt the unfamiliar tingle of fear without it, but the isolation of Hux’s absence was even more acute.

The guards delivered him to an interrogation chamber not so different from the one in which he had once kept Poe Dameron, his long-ago friend. Those days on Yavin IV felt like a half-remembered dream when compared to his life in the First Order. That present was more recent and therefore sharper in his mind, but he wouldn’t have recognized Ben Solo anymore. Ben Solo was weak-minded and afraid; Kylo was more.

He was freed from the binders only for the few moments it took to get him strapped into the chair at the center of the room: bands of durasteel over his wrists, his ankles, and around his neck. He didn’t put up a fight; he had no reason to. They wouldn’t get what they wanted, even if Luke Skywalker himself came in and tried to pull the thoughts straight from his head. But that was dark power, and he would never use it—not in the ways Kylo had mastered.

The interrogator was about Kylo’s size, though rounder at the belly and with meatier, thick-fingered hands good for hitting. These had given Hux his bruises. Kylo wanted to curl the Force around them until each tiny bone snapped and the man screamed and screamed. But here, now, he looked down his blunt nose at Kylo and sneered.

“So, you’re the big, bad Kylo Ren,” he said, voice more shrill than Kylo might have expected. “Don’t look so scary without your little helmet and your laser sword, eh?” When Kylo said nothing, he continued, circling the chair: “Haven’t got your Force, either. You’re just like any other man, aren’t you? Nothing special about you, even if General Organa’s blood flows in your veins.” He spat, spittle landing with a wet slap at Kylo’s feet. “You don’t deserve to be her son. You’re nothing compared to her.”

Kylo remained silent, eyes focused resolutely forward, even as the first heavy blow landed at his side.

“Oh, you’ll be tougher than the weasley little general was,” said the interrogator. “He was begging for mercy before the end.”

Kylo barked a laugh. “You can torture me, but you can’t lie to me about Hux,” he said. “He didn’t give you anything, and he never will. Neither will I.” He shifted as little as the restraints would allow, sniffing dismissively. “Do what you think it will take to break me. You won’t.”

He got a fist to the face for that, stars exploding in his vision as pain radiated up and down his cheek. He had bitten his tongue and it was bleeding, but he just swallowed the blood down. He was used to pain; Snoke had put him through far more of it than one interrogator could, and for years. This was nothing for him, and he would take it—as long as Hux didn’t have to, not again.

The interrogator spent an indeterminate time hitting and taunting him, trying to make him talk. Kylo stayed quiet, offering nothing other than grunts of surprise when the interrogator hit him somewhere he didn’t expect. The interrogator was gentler, though, than his counterpart in the First Order would have been. He didn’t cut Kylo or tear out fingernails or teeth. Eventually, Leia would want to see him, and whoever was in charge of this ship wouldn’t send him to her truly wrecked.

When the interrogator finally told his lackeys to take Kylo back to his cell, he was bleeding from a split lip, had newly forming bruises up and down his sides, and somewhere at the hairline there was another cut, which had been dripping red down into Kylo’s left eye. He was sore, but able to walk back to the cell on his own, with the same four guards all around him.

As he had said he would be, Hux was waiting for him when he was delivered back to the cell. Hux had dressed, though he hadn’t bothered with his boots. The swelling around his eye had gone down some and he could open it, but he looked terrible and very pale.

“Get out,” he hissed at the guards as he guided Kylo to the cot they had shared before.

Kylo sank down onto it, letting himself deflate when they were alone. He closed his eyes tight and scanned his body for the worst of the damage. All of it was superficial, but it probably looked bad to Hux, who was standing between Kylo’s open legs, cradling Kylo’s head against his stomach.

“Are you all right?” Hux asked. “The poison didn’t do anything to you?”

“Nothing that won’t wear off,” Kylo replied as he put his long arms around Hux’s waist and leaned the weight of his upper body into him.

“And did you tell them—”

“Of course not.”

Hux sighed, stroking Kylo’s dirty hair. “My brave Kylo,” he murmured. “My knight.”

Kylo made a quiet sound of approval. Hux rarely called him that anymore, but it still had the same potent effect it always had. He warmed to hear it, wanting to show just how powerful he could be when he exercised his abilities at Hux’s behest. Once, he had hated to imagine himself as the tip of the First Order’s spear, since Hux held the staff end, but it had become a place of pride for him. Hux gave him a guiding hand, turning his rage and ruthlessness on their shared enemies more deftly than Kylo could have alone. They had been so strong together.

“How did we lose?” Kylo asked quietly into the fabric of Hux’s rumpled uniform jacket. “The galaxy should be at our feet.”

“It should,” Hux agreed, low. “Somewhere we went wrong.”

Kylo turned his beaten face up to see Hux’s. “Was it us?”

Hux ran the backs of his fingers down Kylo’s swollen cheek. “Even if it was, I wouldn’t change it. Even if we can’t see every planet come to heel, we’ll still be together, and that is more important to me.”

Hugging him tightly, Kylo hid the tear that slid from his eye.

“They made me watch,” Hux said after a beat.

“What?”

“There’s a holoprojector set into the wall. I had a live feed of your interrogation, even without audio.”

Kylo peered up at Hux again. “What did you feel?”

Hux’s green eyes flashed bright with hatred. “I want to destroy him, that interrogator. He might be twice my size, but I would have found a way. I could have had him executed publicly: bound and whipped until his back was in tatters. Bacta can’t even heal scars that bad. He’d always have them.” He smiled darkly. “I’d let the wounds heal up and then do it all over again. We would watch together.”

Kylo’s smile opened the cut on his lip again and he winced.

“Here,” said Hux, going to the sink and wetting a strip of sheet. “Let me clean you up.”

Kylo sat while Hux bathed his face, the sheet always coming away pink. He sat with his hands propping him up while Hux knelt between his legs and treated him with a tenderness Kylo wouldn’t have guessed he was capable of all those years ago upon their meeting. But they were only tender together; to everyone else, there was nothing but sharp edges that would slice into the hand that held them too tightly.

It seemed perfectly natural when Hux unbuttoned Kylo’s trousers and nuzzled his face into the soft curls above his cock. He said he loved how Kylo smelled, especially in the warm crooks of his body that only Hux got to see. Kylo touched the back of his head, encouraging his gentle explorations, the prodding of his nose down to where Kylo was hardening.

Their desire for each other was always twisted. Even battered and in the stranglehold of their enemies, they wanted one another. Kylo scanned the ceiling of the cell for the little camera that was monitoring them. He couldn’t find it exactly, but he focused on the space above the door and smiled at whoever was watching. Let them see what true devotion was.

Hux managed to get Kylo’s trousers down far enough to free his cock, which he swallowed down right away. This was one of Hux’s most secret pleasures. Kylo had been quick to learn that he enjoyed taking him deep enough to choke as often as he could, sometimes between meetings or, once, in Kylo’s TIE Silencer. There was barely room enough for one of them, but Hux had wedged himself in between the pedals and sucked Kylo’s cock like he was dying for it. Kylo had shot down twenty-four Resistance X-wings in the battle after that.

In the cell now, Kylo let his head fall back as Hux pleasured him with long strokes of both hand and mouth, his tongue making circles around the sensitive underside of Kylo’s cock. He groaned approvingly when Kylo jerked his hips and made him gag, redoubling his efforts after. Kylo lost himself in the sensation, though he craved the feeling of Hux’s life’s energy thrumming through the Force and entwining with his own. It was a kind of intimacy he had never known with anyone else, and wouldn’t ever again.

When he came, he cried out, spilling himself down Hux’s open throat. Hux knew well how to take him and swallowed neatly, though as he pulled off of Kylo’s cock, a string of saliva hung between his lower lip and the tip. It broke in a starburst when Hux looked up again.

“They’ll never take you from me,” Kylo said to him, holding the sides of his face between his hands. “I’m not whole without you.”

Hux blinked at him with a hazy, sex-drunk gaze. “Nor am I. And I’d rather have them kill me than be apart.” He gripped Kylo’s knees. “If they take you, there’s nothing left.”

Kylo pulled Hux up and into his lap, kissing him desperately. It was true for him, too. The had already lost their war; they could not lose each other.

 

* * *

 

FN-2187 had watched countless speeches delivered to the troopers by General Hux. He was a fearsome leader and a brilliant strategist, admired by almost all of the soldiers in his army. He had seemed like a larger-than-life figure, almost too zealous to be real, despite the fact that Finn had seen him in the flesh. And now he was seeing him again, but in a way he could never have imagined.

Poe had told him yesterday that Hux and Kylo Ren were more than just co-commanders; they were lovers. After years of seeing them fight, Finn hadn’t believed him. However, when Poe had brought him to the surveillance room and opened up the live feed from their shared cell, he had gotten very graphic proof that it was true: the great, untouchable General Hux was on his knees for Kylo Ren, very eagerly, ah, servicing him.

Finn had looked abashedly away, telling Poe, “Stars! Turn that off. I don’t want to see it.”

“Well,” Poe said, hands on his hips, “don’t you believe me now?”

He made no move to turn the footage off, but Finn dared to look up to meet his eyes. “Yes, okay, I believe you. But”—he hesitated—“ _why_?”

Poe shrugged, giving a sad glance at the holoscreen, where Hux had now climbed up into Ren’s lap and they were clinging to each other, exchanging heated kisses. “Can you explain love?”

“ _Love_?” Finn said, affronted. “Those monsters don’t even know the meaning of that word. They’re murderers and liars and…” He trailed off, breathing hard.

Love had been a fairly foreign concept to him, too, until he’d met Rey. Now everything in his world seemed to orbit around her like she had the strongest gravity in the galaxy. Everybody could see it on his face when he looked at her; he got enough teasing when she wasn’t around to tell them to stop it. He had never seen Hux look at anyone like that—until now.

Bringing his gaze reluctantly back to the screen, Finn watched as Hux lay back on the cot with Ren bracing himself over him. He was caressing Ren’s face with blatant adoration. It seemed impossible when he had been nothing more than a voice for the First Order’s rhetoric, but it was plain enough now that he was a just a man in love.

“They deserve each other,” Finn spat coldly. “They’re both awful.”

Poe looked sorrowful. “I thought I knew Ben once, and I thought I saw him fall for a couple of boys, but never like this. I don’t know anything about him other than that he looks at _that_ man”—he pointed to Hux on the screen—“like he hung the moons of his homeworld.”

“It’s terrible,” said Finn. “They can’t really be...happy, can they? Not with the things they’ve done.”

“If you believe enough that you’re doing the right thing,” Poe said, “it doesn’t look evil. We might see it like that, but they don’t. To them, there’s nothing wrong, and there’s nothing stopping them from falling in love with someone else who’s just as terrible as they are.”

Finn sighed. “What’s General Organa going to do with them?”

Poe gave a last glance at the screen, where Finn could see Ren and Hux slowly undressing each other between kisses and, presumably, whispered words of love. “I don’t know, buddy. What would _you_ do with them?”

Finn considered as Ren nestled himself between Hux’s legs and kissed his naked belly. Maybe they saw what he and Rey were doing as bad, and there was no way he would give her up, no matter what anyone told them about right or wrong.

“Leave them somewhere,” Finn said. “Like Jakku, where nobody will find them.”

“Together?” Poe asked.

Finn nodded solemnly. “Together.”

 

* * *

 

The guards came for Hux some hours after Kylo had returned to their cell, while the two of them were sitting together on the cot, Kylo’s back against the wall and Hux held close. They had been speaking little, content to just sit together without the words. Kylo, exhausted from his interrogation, dozed off from time to time, but would start awake again as his sleepy mind called up the explosions of their star destroyers as the Resistance overpowered them. Hux would raise his hands and kiss them until he quieted again, shushing him like a child. It might have bothered him once, but not now; no condescension was meant.

When the door opened and the guards came in, Hux scooted off of the cot and stood to his full height. “You want me this time?” he said, though it wasn’t a question.

Kylo stood, challenging them: “Take me. He doesn’t know anything.”

One of the guards trained a blaster on Kylo. “Captain’s orders to bring General Hux. Don’t make me shoot you.”

“You wouldn’t kill either of us,” said Hux. “We’re not fools.”

Another guard stomped toward him and grabbed him by the wrist, yanking him forward. Kylo lunged for the guard, but Hux called, “ _No_. I’ll be fine.”

Kylo forced himself to stand down, though he warned, “Whatever you do to him will come back to you tenfold.”

Genuine fear flashed across the guard’s face before he got a hold of himself and said, “You can’t do anything to us like this.”

Kylo would have preferred to throw him to the side with the Force, but unable to, he charged at him, wrapping one of his hands around the man’s neck. The other guards raised their blasters and told him to let go. He would, after he said to the guard, “I don’t have much to lose anymore, you’re right. So, it would mean nothing to me to kill you where you stand.”

The guard sputtered, his breathed restricted.

“Let him go, Kylo,” said Hux, calm as ever. He was used to these displays, after all. “It’s not worth it.” He held out his other hand for the binders. “Let’s just get this over with, shall we?”

Kylo released the guard, who crumpled to the floor, coughing. One of the others went to help him up while two restrained Hux and led him out of the cell. The door slid shut with a dark finality, leaving Kylo alone in the little space.

Rage surging, he grabbed the cot opposite the one he and Hux shared and wrenched it up from the floor. The weak fasteners gave way with a groan and _pop_ of metal as it came free. The thin mattress slipped off the frame, which Kylo threw against the wall. The crash was loud and bent the frame out of shape. Kylo wanted to rend it with the Force, but he had only his hands. With a snarl, he slammed the frame against the wall again and again, the clang of metal on metal devastating in his ears. They were ringing when he finally stopped, sliding down against the door with his face in his hands.

It was then that the holo display flickered to life, projecting an image of the interrogation room, where Hux was strapped to the chair, the interrogator prowling around him and rubbing his ugly fists together. There was no audio feed, but Kylo could see his mouth moving as he spoke. Hux was staring ahead without acknowledging him, though he grimaced as the man hit him in the ribs.

Kylo wanted to howl in fury, but he was impotent: trapped in the cell with no choice but to watch Hux being abused. The interrogator hit him again, this time in the face. Hux’s head snapped to the side and then lolled down as his face contorted in pain. Kylo felt it like he had taken the blow himself. Cold anguish filled his chest. When they had made their bond, he had sworn to put his body in the way of harm to guard Hux from it. His vow had been solemn, and to face with the reality of seeing Hux suffer was excruciating.

He could swear vengeance, but it was hollow when Hux was still hurt and Kylo could do nothing to prevent it. The “captain” had ordered this beating; Kylo would find him and destroy him, if it was within his power. Even if he died trying—

Kylo caught himself. Giving his life for Hux was something he would do unquestioningly, but it would leave Hux abandoned in the hands of the Resistance, some members of which would surely call for a blood price for the destruction of the Hosnian system. Kylo wouldn’t let them. He’d preserve himself if only to take the punishment they meted out to Hux. Let Kylo’s mother and her minions do whatever they wanted to him; for Hux he’d face anything.

As Kylo watched the holo feed, the interrogator continued to stalk around the room. He carried a dirty rag to wipe the blood from his knuckles after each punch. Hux’s nose was actively bleeding now—maybe broken. Kylo had broken his own before: when he was a fourteen and one of the apprentices at his uncle’s school had caught him in the face with a staff. The pain had nearly blinded him and the healer had had to crack the delicate cartilage back into place before it could start healing. Ben Solo had been banned from combat training for several weeks, much to his frustration.

Hux had had some hand-to-hand training in his cadet days, he had told Kylo once, but he had never excelled at it and preferred blasters and—if at all possible—destroyers’ heavy cannons. He was a leader of men, not a soldier; his place was above the battle, watching it rage and taking in the success of his plans. Except the last time, when it had all come to an end.

Kylo didn’t know how long he watched, but, finally, the holo feed cut off. He was still hunkered against the wall, and he was trembling with a mix of anger and heartache at his failure to protect the man he cared for above everything else in the galaxy. That kind of disappointment in himself was unmeasurable and made his gut twist. Disgusted, he went across the cell to the toilet and wretched, though there was nothing in his stomach but yellow bile.

He was still kneeling there when the guards returned with Hux. He was on his feet, but wavering where he stood. Kylo sprang up and wrapped him in his arms, bringing him to the cot again.

Bloody and bruised, Hux blinked tiredly up at him. “You’re pale,” he croaked. “Have you been sick?”

Kylo’s heart tore as he looked down. Hux knew Kylo so well to see the signs—better than anyone else did. “I’m all right,” Kylo said quietly. “Let me take care of you.”

Hux cast a glance at the ruined cot across from theirs and Kylo turned his eyes down guiltily. “Temper,” Hux admonished. He had never stopped scolding Kylo for his outbursts, especially when he had destroyed some equipment aboard the _Finalizer_. Kylo had fewer of them after they had bonded, but there were times when he still couldn’t control himself.

“What they did to you…” Kylo said. “I want to kill them all.”

“I’m afraid you won’t have that chance,” said Hux as he reached for Kylo’s cool cheek. “You blame yourself, of course. Don’t.”

Kylo’s voice cracked as he said, “I swore.”

Hux put a thumb over his lips, silencing him. “You’ve done all you could. If they take my life, it’s not your fault.”

“Don’t say that,” Kylo growled, ducking his head down to touch his brow to Hux’s. “I won’t live without you.”

Hux didn’t say it, but Kylo read it in his soft sigh and the gentle touches of his hands over Kylo’s head and back: _Neither will I_.

Kylo tended to him then, helping him to wash his face in the sink and then pat it dry between Hux’s hisses of pain. Every wince made Kylo’s desire for their captors’ deaths stronger, but he held his tongue and didn’t speak of it to Hux. Their clothes were tattered and filthy, so they shed them again, wrapping up in the thin sheets on the cot and lending each other their warmth.

“What did they ask you?” Kylo said after a time.

“The same questions as before,” Hux replied. “Only with more blows.”

Kylo squeezed him, though not hard enough to hurt. “You should sleep.”

As they had undressed, two trays of cold rations had been slid through a slot in the bottom of the door. Kylo had offered Hux something, but he had said no. Kylo didn’t want it either; he had no appetite. They would have to eat sometime—maybe after they had rested for a while.

“I don’t want to,” Hux said. “I’d rather just hear your voice. Tell me one of your stories.”

In his work discovering the secrets of the Force, Kylo had accumulated a great deal of ancient Jedi and Sith knowledge, and with it some of their lore. He occasionally told Hux of the legends as they had been passed down to him through holocrons and texts he had discovered.

Kylo called one up and began to recount it, keeping his voice low and soothing. He hoped it would help Hux rest, but it didn’t. Instead, Hux interrupted with questions: sharp inquiries about aspects of the old regime that Kylo didn’t know.

“There’s so much to learn,” Hux said after Kylo had failed to answer his latest question. “We’ve barely scratched the surface of what we could have explored.”

Kylo, whom Hux was curled around this time, said, “You’ve never had any particular thirst for history. What makes you say that now?”

Hux kissed the back of his neck. “We’ll probably be locked away for the rest of our lives. One doesn’t learn to appreciate the open galaxy until it’s taken away.”

Unable to disagree, Kylo just let out a long breath and held Hux’s left hand over his heart. Hux splayed his fingers there, teasingly pinching Kylo’s nipple.

“Ouch,” Kylo grumbled.

From behind him, Hux chuckled. “Don’t pretend you don’t like that.” He did it again, this time softer, fingertips lingering to bring the nipple up hard.

Kylo hummed. “We shouldn’t.”

Hux pushed his hips against Kylo’s buttocks, making him very aware that his cock was hardening. “Why not? Have we got something better to do?”

“We’re barely holding together,” Kylo said. “You need to rest, not—” He stopped as Hux nibbled at his ear: his weakness. He mumbled “Damn you” as he parted his thighs and encouraged Hux to put himself between them. “There’s nothing slick.”

“I’ll survive,” said Hux. He pushed his cock between Kylo’s legs, seeking what pleasure he could find.

Kylo let him do as he wanted, just holding his thighs together and listening to his breathing grow faster and more urgent. Hux clung to him as he thrust, still nipping at Kylo’s ear. Kylo was hard now, too, but he wouldn’t touch himself until Hux was done. It took time, since Hux couldn’t go too fast for lack of lubricant, and yet Kylo shuddered with pleasure as Hux spilled hot on his thighs, making small noises of release.

“Lie on your back,” Hux said after he had recovered.

Kylo wasn’t sure what he was about, but he did as he was told. Hux, battered though he was, moved down between Kylo’s legs and licked every trace of himself from his thighs. Kylo watched him do it, quivering with the need to be touched. With his own spend on his lips, Hux took Kylo in his mouth and saw him to completion.

He got up to rinse away the taste of them both before curling back up on the cot and closing his eyes. Kylo stroked his hair until he was sleeping with his head on Kylo’s chest and Kylo’s heart—figuratively—in his hands.

 

* * *

 

Rey stood speechless in front of the monitor, seeing the evidence of what Finn had told her and yet not believing it. He had said that Kylo Ren—the monster who had taken her captive and tried to bring her to the Dark Side as his acolyte—was reduced to “just another man” by the megalomaniac general of the First Order. Rey had scoffed, but now she could see that all the bravado Ren had shown to entice her to join him disappeared in the arms of the only person who could was more horrible than he was.

The two of them were lying entwined on a tiny cot—both too big for it—and doing _something_ under the sheets. She didn’t want to think about it for too long. But she still couldn’t quite manage to look away. They were both grotesque in their callous destruction of life in the name of their cause, but together they were strangely fascinating.

Rey had little experience with either physical or emotional closeness. Finn was slowly teaching her about both—and the thought of doing something like this with him made her tingle—but neither of them had the blatant and even comfortable intimacy of Kylo Ren and General Hux.

Ren was bigger, but he allowed Hux to hold him like he was petite. It was odd to look at, and yet it made sense as Rey watched them. Hux seemed to be kissing and whispering into Ren’s ear, and Ren would bring their joined hands to his lips and kiss Hux’s knuckles with true affection—like he cherished him.

They didn’t deserve it, Rey decided. They shouldn’t be allowed to love each other like that—not after what terrible crimes they had committed.

Behind her, the door to the observation room opened and a warm hand landed on her shoulder. “Hi,” Finn said.

She turned to look at him out of the corner of her eye. “Hi.”

Finn’s gaze fell on the monitor. “Stars, someone beat both of them to a pulp. I don’t think General Organa would like that. He’s her son, after all.”

“You don’t think they’ve earned it?” Rey asked sharply. “I do.”

“Maybe,” Finn replied. “They’ve probably earned a lot more than that. But I still don’t believe she would support it, even to get them to tell us where their last bases are.”

Rey chewed her cheek. “Is that all they want from them? Some scattered bases?”

“I guess so.”

She considered them as Hux began to shift under the sheet and move down toward the end of the cot. When Ren threw the sheet aside, exposing them, she whirled around, unwilling to look anymore. Finn turned away, too.

“They shouldn’t be permitted to be happy,” Rey said, quiet. “They should be punished.”

“Probably,” said Finn, “but have you seen a lot of people look at each other like they do?”

“Maybe Leia and Han Solo.”

Their reunion had been fond, but it hadn’t been quite as intense as Ren and Hux were with each other. But Leia and Han were older and had seen a great deal more than two fairly young lovers. Maybe that had something to do with it.

“For what they’ve done,” she continued, “they shouldn’t have each other. And I’m going to tell Leia that when I see her.”

She stormed out of the room then, resolved, and Finn trailed after her, eventually catching her hand. She might soon look at him like Ren and Hux did each other, and she smiled to think of it.

 

* * *

 

Kylo came back from the next day’s interrogation with his split lip reopened and a deep cut above his right eyebrow. Recognizing the severity of it, the guards gave him two packets of topical bacta to use. When he was ushered back in, Hux spat at the guards as he bustled him toward the sink to wash the blood from his face. The sting of the cold water made Kylo flinch, but he splashed it over and over, until the water no longer came away red. He sat on the cot then, easing his sore body down onto the thin mattress.

Hux came to sit at his side, touching his swollen cheeks, but not the cuts. “Let me put a little bacta on you at least,” he said. “These might scar without it.”

“What’s another scar?” Kylo asked. He blinked up at Hux. “Unless you want to keep me pretty.”

“I don’t mind the scars,” Hux replied, “but I don’t want you to reopen it and bleed all over the pillow.” He picked up one of the packets. “Just a small bit, I promise, to seal it up.”

Kylo hummed, amused at his fastidiousness. “Wouldn’t want to spoil the good linens, would we?” Hux shot him a displeased look and he managed a laugh. “All right. Just don’t use it all.”

Hux tore the packet open with his teeth and squeezed some of the gel out onto his slender fingers. He brushed it gently over the cut on Kylo’s brow, cold to the touch. “If you don’t want to use the rest of this, what will we do with it?” he said. “I’ve got bruises only. We’d need injectable batca for that.”

“We might need it later,” said Kylo. “I don’t know. I don’t need it all anyway.”

“If you say so,” Hux muttered, setting the packet aside. He put his hands on Kylo’s bare chest, stroking absently.

Kylo lay there and let him do as he pleased, content to be affectionately touched after a hard beating. He had green and yellow bruises on his sides, which ached when Hux so much as brushed them.

“I hate this,” Hux said quietly after a moment. “Seeing you wounded. I will never forget seeing you with your face burned by that bitch of a scavenger girl and your side so red with blood. I thought I might have lost you.”

“I’m not so easy to kill,” Kylo said, offering a wan smile. “It was worse than this, if that’s any consolation.”

Hux frowned darkly. “It’s not and you know that.”

Kylo wrapped a hand around Hux’s bony wrist and squeezed. “I do. I won’t make light of it.” He slid his hand up Hux’s arm to his shoulder and then his neck. His thumb came to rest against Hux’s soft jaw. “They can’t do anything to truly break us.”

“No,” said Hux, leaning into his hand. “They can’t.”

Plucking at the collar of Hux’s shirt, Kylo said, “Lie down with me?”

Hux nodded. “Of course.”

He stripped out of his clothes and curled up against Kylo’s chest, the only sound in the room the whistle of Kylo’s breath through his abused nose. It wasn’t broken, but it hurt. Hux had his head in the crook of Kylo’s shoulder. His eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping. Kylo dragged his fingertips up and down his arm.

He knew Hux’s body so well after all these years, but he never tired of seeing or holding it. He was narrow and skinny, but had a strong frame that he held proudly. Even when they had fought and snarled at each other in those early days, Kylo had appreciated the undaunted way he carried himself.

He was domineering, especially in the bedroom. Kylo had let Hux take him the first time they had gotten to that point. They had been in Hux’s quarters and Hux had ordered Kylo to strip down to nothing while he walked around him, appraising. Kylo might have thought it would be humiliating, that he would have wanted to cover himself and shrink down from his judgment, but he came alive under it. He had stood with his hands at this sides and his cock hard between his legs. When Hux had finally come close to him, he had wrapped his fingers around it and said, “I’ll have you, Ren—just the way I want you.”

“Hux,” Kylo said as they lay together in their cell.

“Hm?”

Kylo shifted to nuzzle the crown of his head. His hair was greasy and unwashed, just as Kylo’s was, but it didn’t bother him. “Will you fuck me?”

Hux lifted his head, angling it awkwardly so he could meet Kylo’s eyes. “Right now?”

“Yes,” Kylo replied. He lowered his voice, which Hux always enjoyed: “I want to feel you inside.”

Shifting against him, Hux pushed his soft cock along Kylo’s thigh. “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re already so abused.”

Kylo slipped a hand down to Hux’s buttock and squeezed. “We don’t have to go dry. We’ve got the bacta.”

Hux’s eyebrows rose. “I hadn’t thought of that.” His face relaxed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” said Kylo, soft. “Please, Hux.” A little bit of begging never hurt, he had learned. Hux was weak for his pleas.

“All right,” Hux said, planting a kiss on Kylo’s chin. He pushed himself away and reached for the bacta packets where they lay discarded on the floor.

Kylo spread his legs to make space and took hold of his cock, stroking to bring himself to hardness. He was beat up, but nothing could really quell his desire when it came to Hux. Being with him was always powerful: his coolness dissipated and he became sensitive to Kylo’s attentions. He made the most stunning noises of pleasure, whether he was fucking Kylo or he was riding him, or under him.

Kylo watched the slight flexions of his lean muscles, the stretch of white skin flushed pink with heat and exertion. He wanted to capture those moments in his mind so that they would never fade and could be called up any time for him to enjoy all over again. But, for now, he had new ones to make when and where they wanted. He could barely believe sometimes that Hux had chosen him, of all the people in the galaxy, to stay beside for the rest of his days. Kylo didn’t deserve him, even if Hux assured him he did.

Bacta in hand, Hux knelt between Kylo’s legs. He squeezed more of the gel onto his fingers—more than he had for the cut—and carefully reached down to Kylo’s entrance. Kylo tipped his hips up to give him better access, and he slid two wet fingers inside him.

Kylo was well-trained by this point and needed no tentative fingering to open up, but Hux liked the ritual of it all, so Kylo let him go through it step by step. He pushed in and out tenderly at first, slow and gradually spreading the fingers to encourage Kylo’s muscles to relax. Kylo sighed as he worked, feeling good but not yet full enough. He brought his knees up higher, presenting himself for Hux to see; he liked to watch what he was doing, how Kylo’s body took him in.

“So beautiful,” he murmured, rubbing his free hand along Kylo’s calf. The fingers inside curled down to hit Kylo’s most sensitive places. Kylo closed his eyes, groaning into it. “There,” said Hux. “Perfect.”

His gaze was intently focused. He did this much like he did his daily work in the Order: with the utmost concentration. Kylo had been taken aback by his directness in the beginning; he almost never closed his eyes when they fucked, always watching to see Kylo’s reactions. Kylo had learned to be honest with him in that, never putting on a show. Hux could always tell when he was acting and drew away to take care of himself. He wanted Kylo to be with him completely or not at all.

He added a third finger, stretching Kylo more and more, until Kylo was aching to be filled. He still had a hand around his cock, teasing himself while Hux attended to him. Hux was hard, too, upright in the red curls. His lips were parted as he breathed through his mouth, deeply affected.

“I’m ready,” Kylo said.

“Say it,” Hux told him.

“Please fuck me.”

Hux gave his fingers a last twist before he pulled them out. He took more bacta and slicked his cock, putting one hand on Kylo’s shoulder to brace himself as he used to other to line up to enter. Kylo held his breath as he waited, only exhaling as Hux breached him and began to push deep. Kylo took everything he gave him, until they were flush, Hux slowly lowering himself down against Kylo’s stomach and chest. Kylo whispered his name.

He moved haltingly at first, overwhelmed, as he usually was when they did this gingerly and with care. They didn’t say the words—it wasn’t who they were—but it was their expression of them: both united, bodies and minds, until their edges blurred into one energy. Kylo couldn’t sense it in the Force, but he didn’t need to when Hux was a part of him like this. Everything else faded into nothingness; there was only them.

Hux sped his pace eventually, clinging to Kylo and burying his face in his neck as he drove hard into him. Kylo wrapped his legs around Hux’s waist to draw him closer. Despite the chill of the cell and their uncovered nakedness, sweat came up between them. They slid against each other, heated and holding tightly. Hux only rose up and away to allow Kylo to stroke his cock again. Hux always insisted he finish first, so he could watch before he lost himself in his own pleasure. He said it brought him to the precipice to see Kylo undone like that.

Kylo took a firm grip and jerked himself with purpose. Hux looked between his face and where they were joined; he held tight to Kylo’s hips to steady him for each thrust. Tingling sensation built in Kylo’s gut, setting him to trembling. His toes were curling as he stroked his cock fast and hard. When he finally broke, he cried out, head thrown back into the mattress and body shaking with the potency of the orgasm.

“Oh, there you are, Kylo,” Hux said, coaxing him through it. “Stars, you’re stunning like this. And mine.”

“Forever,” Kylo managed to say, voice tremulous. “Forever.”

That put Hux over the edge. He groaned, almost doubling over as he gave a last push into Kylo and spent himself there. Kylo couldn’t feel it, but he was marked, and he reveled in that. In time, Hux lay down on him again, and Kylo petted his back until he had caught his breath. Kylo held him, letting him recover in his own time. He went soft and gradually slipped out.

“Let’s clean you up,” he said, rising. He glanced down at his own chest, which was marked with Kylo’s spend. “And me, I suppose.”

Kylo smiled at him, raising his hips playfully to get Hux to roll off of him. Hux complied, stepping onto the cold durasteel floor and going to the sink. He used the tattered sheet from the other cot to wipe down before handing it off to Kylo, who was standing behind him, kissing his shoulder and neck. It stung his split lip some, but he ignored it.

When they were clean, they put some of their clothes back on for the warmth, sitting together on the cot. Kylo was pleasantly sore, not having been penetrated in a while. He breathed in Hux’s post-sex smell, nuzzling the back of his neck. Hux laughed lightly.

“You’re always so keen on closeness after we have sex,” he said. “I would find it irritating if it weren’t so endearing.”

Kylo snorted against his skin, kissing at the edge of his shirt collar. “You say that about a lot of things I do.”

“I do, don’t I?” He sounded smug.

“You wouldn’t tell me outright, but you don’t mind,” Kylo said. “You know you’re difficult half the time.”

“Hmph,” Hux said, dismissive.

Kylo chuckled. “It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t want to change you. And neither do you me.”

Hux nestled against him, sighing. “Never. You’ll always be this to me, and cherished. Don’t forget that, no matter what happens.”

“I know,” Kylo said. “And you’ll be there to remind me.”

“Will I?” Hux asked.

Kylo held him tightly. “I won’t let them take you. We’re one.”

He could hear the smile in Hux’s voice: “Yes, we are.”

 

* * *

 

Leia Organa had come aboard the ship as soon as she had heard they had captured her son—or the man who used to be her son. She didn’t recognize him, now. His hair was long and dirty and a long scar cut across his bruised and battered face. But most of all he was there in a cell wrapped up in the arms of the man who had destroyed the seat of the New Republic. The despair struck her at her core. He had truly chosen to abandon everything he had been as a young man and become _this_.

“Why did you keep them in the same cell?” she asked the ship’s captain, Andrus. “It shouldn’t be permitted.”

“It’s a small brig, General,” Andrus replied. He swallowed, the tendons in his neck standing out. “And it might have put my crew in danger. They’ll kill if they’re apart.”

Leia closed her eyes, mournful. “I see.” She looked back up at the monitor, relieved that now they were finished with their coupling. They had dressed again and were nestled close. The affection was plain: true devotion that stabbed like a cold spike in her heart. “Ben,” she murmured.

“What do you plan to do with them?” Andrus asked.

She hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. It was shock enough to just to see Ben like this. She hadn’t considered a “them” to any of the contingencies. But it would have to be arranged, for as Andrus had said, prying them apart could be dangerous.

Ben had always been volatile and grew deeply attached to the things he cared about. It had been his commitment to the creature Snoke, who had given him the attention he had always craved to feel special, that led him to destroy Luke’s temple and take six students to the First Order with him. He might have been brought back from that terrible choice once upon a time, but his devotion to Hux—that mass murderer—was something she was afraid nothing would change. Ben looked at him with just blatant, unabashed love.

“On Jakku,” Rey said from behind Leia, “they would have been sent into the desert to let the sand swallow them up. No supplies, only the clothes on their backs. They say it takes a few days without water to die.”

 “Rey, no,” Finn said insistently.

 The two of them had come to greet Leia when she had arrived, along with Poe Dameron. All four of them had come to the observation room.

“We don’t put people to death in the New Republic,” Leia said firmly, “especially not so cruelly.”

“But he”—Rey pointed at Hux—“ _destroyed_ the New Republic. He has to answer for it.”

Poe laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll rebuild the Republic, and we should preserve their ideals.”

Leia believed that, too, though reestablishing almost thirty-five years’ work wasn’t going to be easy. She was afraid she was too old for it at this point. But seeing young Rey and Finn together, and even Poe’s more weathered face, she knew they would be the new foundation of it. Her Ben would never be.

“Prison is where they should go,” said Poe. He rubbed his stubbled chin. “But keeping a leash on a Force-sensitive isn’t simple. We can suppress his powers with the drugs, but I don’t know what effect that would have on him in the long term. It could kill him, for all we know.”

Leia’s chest constricted. She was a mother still, and to think of burying her son was too much even for her to bear. “If he’s imprisoned, he’ll have to be watched by someone with the Force.”

“Who?” asked Finn.

Though she didn’t want to put this responsibility on him, she said, “Luke.”

Rey countered: “He doesn’t have the time to mind a monster when he has to rebuild the New Jedi, and I’m not going to do it. I don’t want anything to do with him. Use the drugs.”

“Rey,” said Finn, taking her hand. “Don’t be like that. He’s still a person.”

“Barely,” she snapped.

Leia sighed. After what Ben—Kylo—had done to her, she could understand her hatred. And he _had_ done terrible things, unforgivable things. “I want to speak to them.”

“I don’t recommend going into the cell,” Captain Andrus warned. “They’re all but feral. Let me lock each one into interrogation before you—”

“No,” said Leia. “I’ll got to them now. Take me there.”

           

* * *

 

Kylo looked up as the cell door opened, expecting to see the guards at the ready to take Hux from him. But instead, there was Leia Organa. She was dressed in simple, utilitarian clothes—almost a jumpsuit of gray and purple—but with her intricately braided hair and still-regal bone structure, she looked every bit the senator she had been instead of a mother.

Hux tensed in Kylo’s arms. Had he been an animal, his hackles would have been raised. Still, he didn’t stir from his place against Kylo’s chest. They would protect each other. Leia had a dark look for Hux as he said formally, “General Organa.”

“General Hux,” she said in that so-familiar politician’s voice Ben knew. Softer: “Ben.”

“That’s not my name,” Kylo snapped. Shifting, he moved Hux so he could stand. Hux did, too, though he stayed close at his side, the backs of their hands touching. “I knew you’d come eventually,” Kylo continued. “What do you want?”

Hurt shone in her eyes: betrayal. Had she honestly expected anything less? He had left her behind even before he defected to the First Order. He had no loyalty to her.

“I’m here to collect you,” she said. “Both of you are to be transported elsewhere. To be held until we can decide what to do with you.”

“I won’t come back to you,” Kylo said, voice deep and steady. “If that’s what you want, you won’t get it.” He stepped ever-so-slightly behind Hux and wrapped an arm around his waist. “You’ll have to kill us if you want us to part.”

There was the anguish again, and a flash of hatred directed at Hux. Kylo only tightened his hold on him. Let her know where his loyalties lay.

“I know that,” she said, “and I won’t try it. I don’t understand what you share, but I can see it clearly enough.” A hesitation and then: “Is it a bond in the Force?”

Kylo gave a cold, sure nod. “Unbreakable.”

Leia kept her expression steely, but Kylo recognized the struggle she was having to do so. “I can’t just let you go somewhere together. You’re war criminals. But I can’t put you in a regular prison, either. Your powers are too strong. Either I place you with Luke, or you’ll have to have the suppressants consistently.”

“Absolutely not,” Hux hissed, scowling at her. “You’ll not poison him.”

“If it’s necessary,” Kylo said, “I’ll do it.”

Hux laid his hand over Kylo’s at his waist, turning around to look at him. “I won’t allow it. There has to be another way.”

Kylo held him tightly, but spoke to Leia: “Luke, you said. I’ll go to him if I have to, and I’ll swear not to use my power.” It cut him to think of it, but he would always be connected to the Force, even if he couldn’t channel it anymore.

“Kylo,” Hux said, imploring, “you can’t give that up, even for me.”

Kylo turned him in his arms. “I can, and I will.”

Hux was sorrowful, but there was fierce devotion there, too. “Are you certain?”

Kylo cupped his cheek with a gentle smile. “Forever. We’re one.” When he looked back at Leia, her eyes were averted, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, wet. He said to her, “When will we go?”

“As soon as it can be arranged,” Leia replied. “I’ll speak to Luke.”

Kylo inclined his head, an acknowledgement. “We’ll wait here until then. But keep them from away from us. No more interrogations.”

“I give you my word,” she said. Slowly, painfully: “I won’t see you when you go. I don’t think I can.”

Kylo’s anger flared at her pain. She had had no time for him as a boy and she had none for him now; he shouldn’t have been surprised. She had never cared for him like Hux did; no one ever had. “No,” he said flatly.

Leia pressed her lips together, nodding shallowly. Her right hand moved towards him, as if to touch. He drew back visibly and it fell to her side again. “Goodbye, Ben,” she said. She didn’t give him time to reply, instead just whirling on her heel and leaving the cell. The door slid shut behind her.

Hux dropped his head against Kylo’s shoulder, exhaling. “She said we won’t be separated.”

Kylo stroked his back. “No, we won’t.”

“I suppose I should be grateful to her. But I can’t be. She cast you off and left you alone at that temple. She’s not worthy of you.”

“I know,” said Kylo softly, hearing the nervousness in his voice. “You don’t have to say it. I wouldn’t choose her over you, ever. I’m yours until our last days.”

Hux trembled in his arms, slowly turning his face up to allow Kylo to see him. “You are more precious to me than anything I’ve ever owned.”

Kylo kissed him gently, holding him even as the life they had known for years fell away, replaced by this restricted new one. But they would be together in it, and nothing else mattered, save that.


End file.
